Fairytale gone bad, part I

♫ Indica – Lilja's Lament

I'm surprised to see I've got some new readers again. *gasp* You are all warmly welcome aboard.

Today I'm going to write about some revamped fairytales. I really liked fairytales when I was a kid, and basically I still do. However, having heard the traditional variations once or twice or too many times, I've got more and more interested in their alternative versions. Certainly, these ideas are not particularly new. Traditional stories have been used as an inspiration source in literature, movies, game industry... You name it.

One of my favourite titles is Ludwig Revolution, which I already briefly mentioned in my A-B-C~! post. It's a manga series by Kaori Yuki (whose most famous series is Angel Sanctuary, which hasn't yet got me on my knees). To cut a long story short; I was a much more avid anime and manga fan at teenage, and back then I went through hundreds of unknown titles. I never knew mainstream particularly well. However, I read many somewhat-entertaining titles, but after all these years, I can only remember a few which really stood out from the rest. Ludwig Kakumei, in other words Ludwig Revolution, was one of those.

The main character Ludwig is basically a prince, or the prince of many well-known fairytales. However, not all the stories revamped included a prince in the first place in their original versions, but what-bloody-ever; why not make Little Red Riding Hood run into Ludwig anyway?

"My face isn't my only useful feature. It's magnificent when I take off my clothes too."

"From the moment birth flings them unprepared into this world, humans are lonely creatures. Don't think that you'll gain anything just by sitting around waiting for something to be handed to you. So long, 'sleeping beauty'." 

Another title I really truly like is probably also much better known; Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand it doesn't question the course of Alice's original adventure in her childhood as it tells a story of what happened when she returned there on the threshold of adulthood.

And the Wonderland turns out to be entirely mad, doesn't it? At least it's probably much darker and more violent than it was in Alice's childhood.

Some people said that the movie probably proved that Tim Burton had been cooperating with Johnny Depp for too long. I can barely agree because I liked Depp as the Mad Hatter. He was probably the strongest character – I mean, the most harmonious, the most interesting personality, the strength that kept the movie in one piece. While Alice was a bit flat, Mad Hatter saved the day.

Colleen Atwood won an Academy Award for best costume design for Alice in Wonderland, and in my opinion she truly deserved the award. Mad Hatter and the Red Queen looked amazing and imaginative. On the other hand the movie won the best art direction award as well – and it can barely be denied; it's full of eye candy.

Since this theme is of great interest to me, I'll probably delve more into revamped fairytales and eventually write more blog posts about them. I wonder if the new movie Red Riding Hood is worth watching? I think I read it got a bad reception. In 2012 Untitled Snow White will also be released – maybe it's something to look forward to?
So long (sleeping beauties)!

Reading can be risky for women on the verge

♫ Turisas – To Holmgard and beyond

A while ago a friend and I ordered some books from Amazon, and a while I go I fetched them from the post office. And this is what I got:

Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. I'd been thinking of buying it for such a long time, but I'd never bothered to order it all alone. I'd been waiting for a time when I'd have something else to purchase too. I guess it's a must for me to own, because:

We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
- Cheshire Cat

Through the Looking Glass is relatively strange to me still, I've never had chances to familiarize myself with it. Reading it at the moment.

I don't know why exactly I got the urge to buy Tim Burton's poems. Might be all the movies I've watched? Anyway, the book is awesome. I'm very picky when it comes to poetry. I want poems to really have some ingenious language, not necessarily rhymes, but something. I easily regard modern poetry as wannabe arty, and thus, rarely like it. However, Burton's poetic language was brilliant, and the stories were hilarious. I guess I could relate to Voodoo Girl:

But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win,
For if someone gets
too close to her,
the pins stick farther in.

Last but not least, I also bought something that's supposed to be useful.

AdamsMorioka & Terry Stone's Color Design Workbook, which is supposed to be of some help in my thesis work. I hope it'll also be... Although the whole thesis work frustrates the hell out of me. I realized I rather read fairytales than anything that'd help me to graduate.
I guess this is it for now, so long!